


(you'll be just fine,) let her go

by placidings



Category: Noli Me Tangere & Related Works - José Rizal
Genre: Dance!AU, F/F, Introspection, a love letter to the thing i wish i took seriously, aka the dance!au that is LONG overdue, big shoutout to KYLE HANAGAMI AND HIS WORK, but with dancing, pls read it without the parentheses too i made sure i would make sense AHAH, post-relationship emo, weird formatting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 13:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16198802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placidings/pseuds/placidings
Summary: [ Juli does not remember—choosesnotto (—as far as she was concerned, Paulita did not have the right to be hurt. Was it not the universal rule, those who leave do so without remorse?) ]In which dance is remembering (and also forgetting).





	(you'll be just fine,) let her go

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS STILL PART OF THE PROMPTS I ASKED TWITTER TO GIVE ME MONTHS AGO. Wow. Shoutout to El, this one's for you! <3
> 
>  
> 
> title from [this song](https://open.spotify.com/track/3EPXxR3ImUwfayaurPi3cm?si=h494AqSjRfC0rn2cgFOLHQ)

Everything else fades into the background the moment the music starts; at the first count of a chain of measured movements. Perfection is a must; a requirement, almost, that occupies the entire body; from the hands and feet and face to the head and heart and soul. This need—the human craving for flawlessness—drowns out irrationalities with even more irrationalities as the body is pushed to its limits. To the outside observer, it is powerful, beautiful, even moving; to the dancer tasked with the burden of execution it is anything but: it is long days and nights practicing for hours and hours on end, it is aching feet and bruised knees, it is drum beats and _five, six, seven, eight_ ’s ringing in ears, it is systematic, almost, but as rigid as it can be sometimes, it is liberating, for dancing is never merely _just dancing_ —dance converts the abstract into something tangible. Dance is the language of the body. Dance is poetry.

She opens her eyes in time with the first piano chord (and sees _her_ eyes, vivid but almost fading from her mind’s eye: beautiful, really, but the guilt that sits so well on her face is a façade. Or was it? Had she really seen tear tracks, or was it just a trick of the light?). Juli does not remember—chooses _not_ to (—as far as she was concerned, Paulita did not have the right to be hurt. Was it not the universal rule, those who leave do so without remorse?). Funny, how she managed to infiltrate every single one of Juli’s safe spaces, even dance, yet she couldn’t even be bothered to stay (this is—was—their last dance together, a farewell that was never translated into words). A duet—this was supposed to be a duet, two halves synchronizing to form a whole—and Juli is just half of the equation, but it still echoes, through time, and along with it, the sting of dancing with her; even when everything between them has been torn into pieces. 

(By _her_ own hand.)

The music hangs in the air, suspended, (as Paulita walks past her). When she (opens) closes her eyes, she sees hers once again (—her image flickers when Juli looks into the mirror. It glitches, switches, melds together with her own face, she sees it, the hurt she never bothered to hide, now a splitting image of Paulita’s face).

The drumbeat falls.

(Paulita is a phantom, there but not quite, mirroring her every move—a tilt, a turn, a leap— their paths cross and separate; intersecting at one point then tapering off into different directions until) All Juli can see is her, (right in front of her, moving in sync with her, but) never close enough, just a distant figure (on the fringes of her vision), someone she tried to ignore but couldn’t. When she fell, Juli was there to catch her (—in her arms, the entirety of _her_ ; her curves and edges and nooks and crannies, her strong muscles, her weight, her breath—she barely has time to nuzzle her hair, breathe in the scent of her sweat before she’s spinning out of her grip, only to be drawn back in); her touch still lingers in the back of her head, down her neck where her fingers lightly tread. The look, the hurt in Paulita’s face (as they pulled in close) is seared into her head—an act, she tries to convince herself to this day. 

(And because the figure dancing along the fringes of her memory is nothing but an illusion,) She rises on her tiptoes, extends one leg gracefully, slowly, the way Paulita did; as though she were ready to fall off the edge, to break free from her grasp. There is no one to hold on to her, Juli knows, but it still feels like flying—free, this is how she must have felt; when she was the one doing this, and Juli the one holding on to her with all her strength.

And yet, she still has to let go. Juli falls (towards her as she backs away—fitting, Juli realizes, how this is exactly what happened: when Paulita fell, she caught her with no hesitations; when it was _she_ who fell, she _ran_ and left her to crash). She is left on the floor, clutching on to her (ankle as she turns and stomps around; as though she were trying to shake her off). Even after, she still has to bear the weight of her on her back—Paulita is a burden she couldn’t seem to shake just yet. Paulita is a phantom, there but not quite, (mirroring her move as she pulls in close; their faces a hairsbreadth apart—) and just like that, she is gone. Their piece ends but the music continues—so does Juli.

It is easy to play the part of the one who got cheated—she did not have to feign hurt, did not have to act, she just had to translate the tempest in her chest into movement; let it seep through her limbs. The choreography is beautiful, one of her favourite solos; so much that recalling the steps feel effortless: she could retrace everything with her eyes closed if she wanted to; could remember clearly how it felt the day they filmed (—the lights, warm on her back. The somber notes filling every space. The distinct ache in her chest). She lets it (the memory, the music, the choreography) fill the spaces Paulita left, she lets it mend the cracks she made; it is through dance she met her, loved her, broke her, maybe it is also through dance she could heal her, let her go. Juli does not let the memory course through her fancy—she, herself, dances through it; as though doing so could erase it from the past.

The music ends, and the silence is deafening.

Paulita is gone, now in the arms of a poet of words instead of the body, for a reason she never bothered to explain. She exists to her now only in memory, in this piece—Juli does not know whether to think it maddening or sad or painful, to know that this beautiful, unadulterated fragment of something they both loved connects them still. It stays for as long as they could both move, and even then, it’s immortalized through Juanito’s camera. It is, sadly enough, inescapable. It is, frustratingly, an intrusion—Juli loves this, but it is through this that Paulita has tainted the comfort of dancing.

(In dance, it is easy to forget the external yet ridiculously difficult to forget what happened internally—emotions are tied to everything.)

Maybe one day, she will learn to dance this without Paulita haunting her; reclaim it for herself. Maybe one day, Paulita’s imprint will fade into nothingness. Maybe one day, she could dance this piece with her eyes clear and open; learn to turn a duet into a solo, to stand her ground on her own, to let go.

(Maybe one day, Juli thinks.)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic wouldn't be possible without the sudden burst of inspiration (a bad habit for a writer, i KNOW) kyle hanagami's latest [piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp0nVG2NBTg) gave me. ashley gonzales is gorgeous, and michael dameski is RIDICULOUS. i love them. big fan of kyle's work, too.
> 
> also, yes, juli = michael, paulita = ashley, but since she's dancing 'alone', juli does some of paulita's parts too. it happens.
> 
> i love this au too much to let it go.
> 
> anyway, hmu on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/Iakambini)


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